https://www.ecowatch.com/elephant-knysna-forest-2628279024.html?fbclid=IwAR2
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Lorraine Chow, Feb. 07, 2019

A sobering 15-month study on the declining population of the southernmost
herd of African elephants has determined only one elephant, a mature female,
is free-roaming in the Knysna forest in South Africa.

The analysis – titled And Then There Was One – was recently published in the
African Journal of Wildlife Research.

For the study, researchers set up camera trap across the whole elephant
range from July 2016 to October 2017 and concluded upon analysis that the
female elephant, estimated at 45 years old, was by herself.

“Because elephants move along defined elephant pathways, we placed our
cameras on these paths and covered the elephant range evenly, with spaces
between camera traps no larger than the smallest range recorded for
elephants,” one of the study’s authors Lizette Moolman, a South African
National Parks scientist, explained in an article posted to the park’s
website.

“In other words, an elephant would not reside in a gap area, between camera
trap locations, for the duration of the survey. The cameras were all active
for 15 months, and during this time the same female elephant was identified
in 140 capture events, always by herself. No other elephants were
photographically captured.”

Fellow researchers behind the study were shocked to find only one elephant
left in Knysna, as the gentle giants historically roamed the area in the
thousands.

“The brutal reality is there is no longer a population of Knysna elephants,”
study co-author Graham Kerley of the of Centre for African Conservation
Ecology at Nelson Mandela University, told Business Day. “All the mystique
of the Knysna elephant is reduced to a single elephant left in rather tragic
circumstances.”

Their numbers have declined dramatically over the past three centuries due
to hunting as well as human encroachment that has forced the elephants from
their natural habitats and squeezed them into smaller and smaller areas. The
Knysna forest was previously a site for rampant timber exploitation.

While the solitary elephant appears in relatively good shape, Kerley
explained to Business Day that she has swollen temporal glands with
excessive temporal streaming, suggesting she might be stressed from being
alone.

According to the National Elephant Center, female African elephants are
social creatures and usually roam in herds with a number of related female
adults and male and female offspring.

The maximum lifespan for females is more than 65 years, so the lone Knysna
elephant could be by herself for two more decades.

As for capturing her and moving her to other elephant populations, Kerley
noted that “would be dangerous for her and we don’t know if it would even be
of any value to her as she knows the forest and she might not be able to
settle into another area with other elephants.”

Images of her show that her breasts are undeveloped and her mammary glands
are shriveled, meaning she has likely never been pregnant or has not given
birth in a long time, according to Business Day. Artificially inseminating
her would be too risky to attempt, Kerley said.

“Considering all these factors, the debate about how we have allowed this
population to go functionally extinct and how to manage the last elephant is
very emotional and very serious as she is a symbol of how we are treating
biodiversity as a whole,” Kerley told the publication.

Original study >>
https://journals.co.za/content/journal/10520/EJC-130f909485